Animal transplants imminent

By Kate Benson

December 10, 2009 — 12.00am

AUSTRALIA has lifted its five-year ban on the transplantation of animal cells and organs into humans, allowing hospitals to use pig cells to treat diabetes, Parkinson's disease and strokes within months.

The National Health and Medical Research Council made its decision despite pleas from animal rights activists and transplant specialists that the procedure had not been proven safe and could result in the creation of deadly viruses.

Xenotransplantation was banned in 2004 because of concerns that pig endogenous retrovirus could spread to humans.

The virus was non-aggressive in pigs but could mutate into a virulent, deadly strain if it came into contact with common human viruses such as influenza or herpes, a Sydney cardiologist and former president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, Anne Keogh, said.

''It is proposed as being unlikely, improbable, but there is literally no way to predict this. What this means is the potential for another SARS or AIDS, another viral pandemic, much more dangerous than the recent bout of swine flu,'' Professor Keogh said.

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She said a recent clinical trial of nine patients in Russia, where cells from piglets were used to treat type 1 diabetes, was disrupted when a patient failed to return for testing.

''This patient could have been infected by the transplantation, by the PERV virus, their insulin requirements may have increased, they could have developed a cancer which could have been blamed on the process,'' Professor Keogh said.

But Bob Elliott, the medical director of the company carrying out the trials, Living Cell Technologies, said the patient could not have been infected as the pigs used did not carry pig endogenous retrovirus.

''[Food and Drug Administration] guidelines stipulate that the pigs used must not be capable of producing a virus which could infect humans,'' he said.

The breeding of piglets for xenotransplantation also ''created a plethora of very serious threats to animal welfare'', a project co-ordinator with Animal Liberation, Jacqueline Dalziell, said.

''Not only is such treatment, mass breeding, and killing of animals completely inhumane, but the pseudo-science requiring the confinement and death of these animals is not progressing human health, nor medical knowledge, and is extremely costly.''

Living Cell Technologies would immediately submit an application to conduct trials in Sydney, Professor Elliott said.